It’s butterfly season!

I decided I had to do something about my not having seen Common Rosefinch this year and visited Sørkedalen on Monday. Here two stops gave 4 singing males and them when I went to Maridalen later I heard one there so they are clearly a bit like busses.

Maridalen also produced calling and clearly territorial Red-backed Shrikes, the nesting Wrynecks, Icterine Warbler collecting nest material and singing Marsh Warbler. These species are all scarce migrants in the UK amd the sort of birds that can make a day om the east coast in late spring but I have all 5 of them breeding on my local patch in Oslo 😊

I have not seen the Hobbies again but have discovered a Hooded Crow’s nest where they were calling. I have read up in BWP and it looks like they visit a number of potential nests before choosing so I will have to wait and see if they nest here. Even if they don’t then the chamces are high that they attempt to breed somewhere in Maridalen.

A large number of geese are now flocking in Maridalen to moult and 2 Pink-footed Geese and a couple of Barnacle Geese are amongst the Greylags and Canadas.

 

Butterflies received a lot of attention today. I visited the same site where I discovered the Green-underside Blue on Sunday. There was less sun than on Sunday and the butterflies I found were not flying around so frantically which meant I worked out what they were. I had a total of 6 Green-underside Blue, 1 Mazarine Blue, 5 Dingy Skippers, 2 Grizzled Skippers, 2 Pearl-bordered Fritillaries, 1 Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary, 1 Wood White, 1 Orange Tip, 1 Small White and 1 Green-veined White!

Both the skippers were my first sightings in Oslo and the Wood White only my third ever of the species. This site clearly has lots of potential - I thought it was good last year but have now added 4 additional species in just 2 visits this year.

Wood White (skoghvitvinge)

Green-underside Blue (kløverblåvinge)

and another one

and yet another one

a Mazarine Blue (engblåvinge) - very similar but smaller spots on forewing and more spots on hindwing and a smaller area of blue rather than greeny blue dusting

same as above

Grizzled Skipper (bakkesmyger)

Dingy Skipper (tiriltungesmyger)

a Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary (brunflekket perlemorvinge)

and a Pearl-bordered Fritillary (rødflekket perlemorvinge) - the two species are very similar...

same as above

Marsh Warbler (myrsanger)

same as above

male Red-backed Shrike (tornskate)

my first Common Rosefinch (rosenfink) of 2021

Wryneck (vendehals)

Bullfinch (dompap)